The Inquiry Page 31

  ‘We have evidence,’ said Patrick. ‘Kidnapping, imprisonment, assault and battery, torture even.’

  Kareem glared at them. ‘What fools you are in danger of becoming. I believe you spoke to a young man called Sami.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sara. She had been unsure till this moment, knowing her deduction was unprovable, whether to test it on him. ‘He told me a part of his story.’

  ‘Part? I understand he was most open with you.’

  ‘I won’t ask how you understand that. If you do, you will know he missed out the bit that really mattered. The last two hours. Why? Why was he so emphatic in telling me all about his friend Asif’s life as a chef in Birmingham – when Asif’s family said he disappeared twelve years ago. Why, Kareem, why? I’ve thought long and hard about it. Something happened, didn’t it?’

  ‘Do you really want to know the truth, Sara?’

  ‘Test me.’

  ‘Your little friend Sami was a police informer. A tout. A grass.’

  ‘What?’ She was stopped in her tracks. ‘You’re making this up.’

  ‘I saved his life. In service of your country, of my employer, I declared his innocence.’

  Patrick had been listening hard. ‘Whose life did you take to save his, Kareem?’

  Kareem, silent, shook his head, displaying a silent contempt.

  ‘Was it Asif by any chance? The innocent young man you sacrificed to maintain your credibility.’

  ‘Do not worry yourself, Patrick. Whether he is now dead or alive, that boy was a nothing.’

  ‘That sounds like a confession to murder,’ said Patrick.

  Kareem slowly shook his head, his face forming a contemptuous smile. ‘No, Patrick. No bodies. There never will be. We have moved on from the Irish days when an informer was left on the side of a lane with two bullets in his head for his loved ones to collect and grieve for.’

  ‘How many more Samis, Kareem?’ said Patrick. ‘How many more Asifs?’ He stood up, pulled out a sheet of paper from his jacket pocket and held it in front of Kareem’s eyes. ‘You may recognise this.’

  Sara glanced at him, questions and fears in her eyes. Patrick had never mentioned he was bringing it; she had no idea. Had he had a sixth sense? Now that Kareem was in front of him, what card was he trying to play? To drum some sort of confession out of him?

  ‘Of course,’ replied Kareem. ‘And I have kept my own copy.’

  ‘The contract. My signature and yours. It truly was your licence to kill, wasn’t it? I’ve lived in fear of it for twelve years,’ said Patrick bitterly. ‘But no longer. Tomorrow I will hand this original copy to the Secretariat of the Morahan Inquiry. If you at least acknowledge the existence of the contract, even if nothing more, your conscience can be clear.’ He paused. ‘And, though it will mean nothing to you, mine might finally feel clear too.’

  At the mention of ‘conscience’, Kareem cast him a long, mirthful look of incomprehension. ‘Morahan is dead, Patrick.’

  ‘His Inquiry lives on. It’s not over, it’s unstoppable. This whole ghastly devil’s bargain will be blown.’

  ‘And you with it if you persist. But not me. For I am dead,’ said Kareem with finality, allowing the silence of death to fall.

  ‘Patrick?’ murmured Sara.

  ‘Yes, Sara.’ Both men turned to her, a flicker of surprise in Kareem’s eyes.

  ‘When you were summoned to act as Kareem’s solicitor – to represent him – you said he told you from the beginning that the police and MI5 had enough evidence to put him away for many years.’

  ‘Yes, correct,’ he said uncertainly, not knowing where she was heading. ‘Kareem always knew that. So that was the choice – prison or join our side.’

  ‘Did you ever examine that evidence?’

  ‘There was no point. It was taken for granted and agreed by all sides before I arrived.’

  ‘But what actually was the evidence?’

  ‘Photographs, meetings where plots were hatched, transcripts.’ ‘I’ll put it another way. Evidence that would be allowed in court – or that wasn’t just hearsay.’

  Patrick hesitated. ‘I was never required to examine it. But I guess there would have been words he’d said publicly. Some of those transcripts might have been accepted. Evidence of conspiracy to commit terrorist acts, incitement to violence.’

  ‘If you really think about it, did you ever see or know of evidence that would definitely convict him?’

  ‘I guess not. But that was a given. J knew it, Isobel knew it. Kareem himself more than anyone seemed to know it was hopeless.’

  ‘Yes, “seemed” to know.’ She smiled at Patrick. ‘It’s OK, you were acting in accordance with your client’s wishes.’

  She turned to Kareem. ‘You see, Kareem, it doesn’t really hang together, your narrative, does it? None of it. From beginning to end. There’s an alternative. Isn’t there?’

  29

  ‘My dear Sara,’ said Kareem with a regretful smile, ‘if only, I often think. But always that streak of impulsiveness.’ She said nothing; he couldn’t resist the silent challenge. ‘If you wish to display that streak now, who am I to stand in your way?’ He looked at his watch. ‘But be quick.’

  Sara caught sight of Aaqil standing in the half-light below the platform, hand on knife. She turned to Kareem – he was gesturing at Aaqil to withdraw. She realised the sickening truth – Kareem was preening. She repressed a seething at his smugness, unable to believe that she’d once seen it as the superior knowledge and worldliness of a glamorous older man.

  ‘Let us return to your trip to Islamabad,’ she began calmly. ‘You travel first class—’

  ‘Of course,’ he smirked.

  ‘Ostentatiously you turn left into the plane while your fellow students turn right—’

  ‘Hardly my fellows,’ he said.

  ‘Please allow me, as I have allowed you.’

  ‘I only wish to give your alternative narrative every chance by correcting facts…’

  ‘It’s as if you are making a show. You stay in an expensive hotel and are then whisked away. You change your travel plans, returning to England via a third country. A detour that could almost have been designed to attract attention. Once back, you take every visible step to raise your profile as a radical Islamist. You consort with future bombers, you act as a recruiting sergeant for jihad. 7/7 happens. You know full well you’re under surveillance, that your phone must be bugged. Yet you start criticising 7/7 in front of the brothers. It was “inelegant”, “wrong”, you say – almost as if you want to be overheard. When you’re picked up by the intelligence services, you neither protest your innocence nor point to the lack of evidence against you. Indeed, you appear to confirm it. Then, with hardly a struggle, you offer your services, ensuring you are bound into MI5 with a written contract that gives you a hold over it.’ She paused. ‘You say you want my account to be correct. Any inaccuracies so far?’

  Kareem had sat impassively; now his face lit up with a manufactured grin and a short chuckle. ‘It is an excellent “narrative”. Please continue.’

  ‘As you’ve done with other women, you seduce your handler, Isobel, now Dame Isobel, Le Marchant. You’ve put yourself at the very heart of the intelligence operation against Islamist terror. But who are you really, Kareem?’

  ‘An interesting question, Sara. Who are any of us?’

  ‘Let’s turn it on its head. Perhaps it’s not the jihadist leaders you must throw bones to, but your MI5 employers. And it is your real comrades, your real controllers – perhaps ultimately the man, or men, you met in Pakistan – that you are still working for. You calculate, plan, think long-term. Years, decades even. So yes, you throw the British security services some jihadist hotheads and idiots, none of them of real use to your cause. And you preserve the ones you believe capable of whatever final victory you have in mind. All the while you assure your MI5 handler, your lover, that they present no threat.’ She rose from her chair and walked in front of his, her eyes ov
er him. ‘Correct?’

  Kareem stayed in his chair, the smile still playing around his lips. ‘You are a woman, Sara, I am a man. I will concede you one element of your narrative. Isobel. Dame Isobel. Even now, we see each other.’ He paused and raised himself to whisper in her ear: ‘I sometimes place my lips on her ageing bony cunt.’ He relaxed back in his chair.

  ‘I choose not to hear that,’ said Sara. ‘Then, in 2016, the game ends,’ she resumed. ‘The woman we speak of becomes her organisation’s head. Largely because of the apparent success of your and her operation. You’re signed off her books, killed by a drone strike. And you’ve achieved your ambition, of which she has never had a single inkling, so beyond her comprehension would it be. You have built your secret army for whatever plans you have in mind.’

  Kareem looked again at his watch. ‘Time passes. Is your amusing story nearly over?’

  ‘Just the coda, as you’ve called it. Patrick and I have speculated about the identity of Morahan’s source – the man, or perhaps woman, going by the name of Sayyid. Who is in possession of the documents Sayyid provided? We ran through names. We assumed it was a good person, exposing evil. But let us turn this too on its head. One other person would have possessed these files – given to him by his handler as he needed them for the role she believed he was playing. One person only knows why the dark-haired woman in the photograph, me, might be drawn to seek out the white-robed man seated on her right.’

  She retreated to her seat, needing, from some indefinable urge, to restore distance between them.

  ‘You, Kareem. You had those files.’

  ‘But why, Sara?’ The smile twisted itself into a pained puzzlement. ‘Why would I wish to do that?’

  ‘Boredom? Mischief-making? No, that’s not you. The Morahan Inquiry, conducted thoroughly and scrupulously – as he wished it to be – presented a threat. Concealed within its mass of evidence might have been a route to the correct destination – and your exposure. So why not sow confusion? The wilderness of mirrors, as Morahan told me you called it in that strange conversation. Provide tit-bits of enticing, secret information to the Inquiry’s chairman. And lead him to me – for whatever perverse satisfaction that’s given you.’

  ‘If this were so, Sara, might that not be a wonderful outcome? That you would see how I have served your country. Or should I say your “adopted” country.’

  ‘I’m British, Kareem. Let me continue my narrative. British intelligence hires you to be its servant; and believes it will always be your master. But the reverse has happened. MI5, maybe MI6 too, teach you all their tricks – you become a super-agent, skilled and drilled, and you now deploy those tricks to defuse this potential threat to your ultimate ambitions. The Sayyid files are not the product of an idealistic whistleblower; they’re planted by you to cause disruption. The death of Sir Francis Morahan is contrived by you, tailor-made so that conspiracy theorists can point the finger at an MI5 panic-stricken by the leakage of secret files and the possible consequences. Yes, MI5 is worried – perhaps it is they not you who threaten Patrick. But when an “accident” befalls my father as he intercepts an intruder, who is that?’

  ‘I would never do anything to harm you, Sara,’ said Kareem. ‘I once told you that.’

  ‘You already harmed me, Kareem. Finally, we come to J. It’s a deliberate drowning. I remember what Morahan said to me. “I’m not a conspiracy theorist. I don’t believe our intelligence services shoot people in the head or drop them out of helicopters, or out of boats with lead in their boots.” Perhaps he was right. Perhaps MI5 doesn’t. But there’s someone who does – or whose henchmen do it for him. You, Kareem. You. And you end up the winner. The Inquiry is smothered. You’re out of danger. You remain the hero whom your lover continues to parade as the saviour of the nation. You – and she, for her success suits you so well – emerge unscathed.’

  She stopped, exhausted. Kareem’s eyes bore in – despite herself, she felt that charge of seventeen years ago. ‘Have you forgotten,’ he said softly, ‘surely not, the message you received on the night of July the 6th 2005? As you try now to harm me, how can you deny that I would never harm you?’ Patrick glanced at Sara; her head was in her hands.

  ‘Yes,’ continued Kareem, ‘you have nothing to say to that. But here you have much else to say. You are a clever woman, Sara. How much might we have achieved together? Even yet, you might understand me. So before I leave you to bide your time in this lonely place, I will, in return, tell you not yet a further narrative but a story. Having created your own fantasy, I hope you will enjoy it and appreciate its compatibility.’

  This time he stood, circling the platform as he spoke, delivering his epilogue.

  ‘Some years ago – let us say in the first half of the first decade of the twenty-first century – a young man arrives in the beautiful hilly country of Shangla in Pakistan. There he meets a very important person – a leader who, at that moment, is taking refuge in the mountains. In a year and a half’s time, this leader will move to a large white-walled complex in the town of Abbottabad.

  ‘After reaching the end of a rough track, the young man’s car can go no further. He is escorted on foot deep into the mountains until he arrives at what seems little more than a shepherd’s hut. It turns out to extend from a spacious cave. The leader he has come to meet is gentle, welcoming, softly spoken, unfailingly polite, wise, possessed of great learning, perhaps even divinity. He has been unwell but, in the mountain air, is recovering.’

  Kareem stopped abruptly, tilting his head and listening. He checked his watch. Patrick glanced at Sara; she looked almost smug.

  ‘Time rushes,’ said Kareem, ‘but I will finish my story. This leader offers his visitor tea and sits him down on a rug beside him. He tells him that he is a special person among those fighting to banish the corruption of the west. And he has a special mission. The way he will explain this mission is through a parable.

  ‘“You are the fish swimming in the lake,” the leader begins. “Fishermen try to catch you but they do not know what size or age you are. You understand they would like to know you better, to possess you, to eat you. One day, you will see a bait dangling above and then striking the surface of the water you are swimming in. You will bite at it. When the bait is stuck inside your mouth and the fishermen are trying to pull you onto shore, you pretend to fight. You fight for a well-judged number of minutes and then you surrender. You relax. Your body ceases to thrash around. In your floppiness, you allow the fishermen to bring you onto shore, store you in their canvas bag and take you to their home. The fishermen are hungry and will soon want to cook and eat you. This you will not resist. When they have tasted and chewed you, they will swallow you and you will descend into their stomachs. You reach their entrails and you will stay inside there for as long as it takes to poison and rot them. However many years that might be. And when they die, your glory will live on for ever.”’

  In the distance, emerging from the hum of the lights, Sara began to make out a low rhythmic sound. And now, as Kareem talked of ‘glory’, its origin was unmistakable. A helicopter approaching. Patrick and Sara exchanged a quick look and turned back to Kareem. His expression was fixed, unreadable.

  ‘A few more seconds, then I must leave you,’ said Kareem. Despite the growing vibrations, he continued at the same measured pace. ‘When the leader has finished his parable, he asks the man if he has understood its meaning. The visitor replies that he has. And when he returns to his country, the young man himself becomes a fisherman and distributes his fish to many important people throughout the land. Slowly they rise and rise within the highest institutions of government, business, industry and the state. They are the new fish. There are shoals of them. They are preparing.’

  Kareem looked from Sara across to Patrick. ‘It is an interesting story, is it not? It makes one think about the possibilities of the future world.’ He turned back to Sara, moving closer. ‘Before I slip away, Sara, I will tell you something,’ he said softly b
ut clearly. ‘There will come a moment when you will finally understand me. And then you will appreciate what you have missed.’

  ‘Stop, Kareem,’ she hissed back. ‘You have done your evil. Now leave me alone.’

  Kareem rose, slowly shook his head once at her and strode towards the edge of the platform; Patrick ran round to intercept him. Aaqil was already there, knife in hand. They watched Kareem vanish into the darkness, followed by Aaqil and the sound of a door slamming.

  ‘It’s OK,’ said Sara, the helicopter’s din camouflaging her words. ‘He’s too late. Vanity. He had to finish. They’ll get him.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Shush. Later.’

  Patrick leapt up and ran in the direction they’d left. A thick oak door was shut. He tried it. Locked, unmoveable. He went to the doors he and Sara had entered by. Locked.

  ‘It’s fine,’ shouted Sara over the helicopter engines. ‘They’ll come and release us.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I also texted Sylvia when we drove up the hill.’ She grinned triumphantly. ‘Until we found this place, I couldn’t give her the co-ordinates. I asked her to send the local coppers round. Looks like she upgraded to choppers. Maybe she misread. Mind you, took longer than I’d have liked.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  She paused, appearing to be picking her words carefully, all the time calculating how she would speak only truth and any sin would be of omission, not mendacity. ‘Number one, I couldn’t be sure Kareem would show up, though all my instincts were screaming it at me.’

  ‘I thought we’d accepted he was dead. Just a question of cock-up or conspiracy.’

  ‘Yes, we did. But after what you said, I kept going over it. Isobel somehow didn’t make emotional sense. Her tears – you said they felt like crocodile tears at the time – seemed less and less convincing.’

  ‘Sorry, I interrupted. There was a number two?’

  ‘Yes, in case it didn’t work out. Oh, and number three, you might have stopped me coming back.’